As expected, Apple announced its new iPhone tonight, dubbed the iPhone 5. The rumours and leaks nailed it, with the most prominent feature being the move from 3.5" to 4" (1136x640). Due to the way iOS handles resolutions, applications need to be adapted for this new display, and if they are not, they will be letterboxed (black bars). It has a faster processor, better camera, LTE, and several other improvements, while the. As always, Apple does it right: shipping 21 September in the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore - the rest of the world will follow later.

So iOS handles random resolutions just fine, it just has no way of letting apps handle random resolutions, which is to say iOS does not handle random resolutions well at all.

iOS handles random resolutions just fine. Apps can and some do handle random resolutions just fine, but most don't as they haven't been tested on random resolutions. Presumably due to internal testing results, iOS won't assume that the app will work just fine so it restricts the resolutions unless the app specifically says it supports that resolution just fine.
I personally know a few games that after adding the iPhone 5 resolution to it's list of supported resolutions will work as expected with no further code modifications.